The roar of the greasepaint precedes that of the autumn wind this year. If you didn’t feel like spending Labor Day weekend on a road trip to Cape Cod, you could as easily have spent it on a road trip with Molière and Mozart in DON JUAN GIOVANNI (American Repertory Theatre at the Loeb Drama Center in rep through October 6). Since then, the Huntington Theatre Company has opened two promising shows: the pre-Broadway engagement of the Olivier Award–winning THE 39 STEPS (Boston University Theatre through October 14), which mixes Monty Python into its Alfred Hitchcock, and Boston playwright Ronan Noone’s solo drama THE ATHEIST (Calderwood Pavilion through September 30), in which film star Campbell Scott plays a morally challenged tabloid journalist.

An African-American Willie Stark wends his way through Trinity Repertory Company’s stage version of Robert Penn Warren’s ALL THE KING’S MEN (through October 21); Stanley Kowalski bellows for Stella in New Rep’s A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (through October 7); Boston favorite Leigh Barrett takes on GYPSY’s Mama Rose at Stoneham Theatre (through September 30); Nora Theatre Company lets us in on THE SECRET LOVE LIFE OF OPHELIA at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre (through September 30); and “The Impossible Dream” echoes its insistent way through MAN OF LA MANCHA at Lyric Stage Company of Boston (through October 13). SpeakEasy Stage Company offers the New England premiere of the Off Broadway hit ZANNA, DON’T! (Calderwood Pavilion through October 13), a musical fairy tale about a matchmaking teen with the ability to change the world the way Dolly Levi changed Yonkers. Boston Theatre Works’ stripped-down staging of A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM is just up at the BCA Plaza (through October 20). And there are plenty more to come — we hope not turkeys — before Turkey Day.

Perfect Tenn When Tennessee Williams summered in Provincetown in the early 1940s, Eugene O’Neill was the playwright most associated with the tip of the Cape.

A brutal world Orpheus Descending is such an urgent work that you can see how Tennessee Williams allowed an earlier version of it to pop squalling into the world before it was fully gestated.

Dying breeds Chekhov insisted that his final masterpiece, The Cherry Orchard , was a comedy and fumed at Stanislavsky’s having his characters suffer through their fraying existences at the pace of a Robert Wilson opus.

Doodle bugs Every teen mag worth its weight in heartthrobs can tell you what your notebook doodlings reveal about your personality.

ARTSEMERSON'S METAMORPHOSIS | February 28, 2013 Gisli Örn Garðarsson’s Gregor Samsa is the best-looking bug you will ever see — more likely to give you goosebumps than make your skin crawl.

CLEARING THE AIR WITH STRONG LUNGS AT NEW REP | February 27, 2013 Lungs may not take your breath away, but it's an intelligent juggernaut of a comedy about sex, trust, and just how many people ought to be allowed to blow carbon into Earth's moribund atmosphere.